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We have yet to ring in the new year, but in anticipation of other disappointing holidays to come (seriously, isn't New Years set up to be anticlimactic?), let's consider Valentine's Day. Like New Years, it's meant to be a special occasion. Valentine's Day has the added pressure to create a particularly romantic day with your partner, a sure sign that reality may not meet expectations. Or maybe you shun the cliché chocolate and roses, but then the pressure of anti-Valentine's Day can be just as great! You have to wear sweatpants so hard while you care so little because it's all just a commercial holiday anyway, right?

Today in lab, my coworkers and I discovered what might be a seasonal proof to warm your icy, disappointed heart this February 14th. Just coming off the winter solstice, we were reflecting on how day length does not grow or shrink evenly throughout the year. Rather, following a sine curve, the day length barely budges around the solstices in June and December, while it rockets upward in spring or down in fall, at the equinoxes.

Just take a look at the sweet graph I drew to explain this. The horizontal axis corresponds to the day of the year, or time. The slope of the sine curve reflects the rate at which day length changes. A steeper portion of the line corresponds to times when daylight shrinks or expands at a faster clip from day to day. The fastest rate of change occurs at the autumnal equinox (AE) and the vernal equinox (VE). The peak and trough, at the summer solstice (SS) and winter solstice (WS) are flatter, meaning the day length doesn't change as quickly. Having just experienced the winter solstice a week ago, we are, sadly, at the bottom of the graph.

Given the continuous nature of the increases in daylight, when will we subjectively experience a slow thawing from winter darkness? By the vernal equinox, the days will be as long as nights and we will clearly have sensed the earlier sunrises and later sunsets. That is three months from now though, or about 90 days. Maybe halfway to the vernal equinox, 45 days from now, we will remark to our coworkers and spouse "Hey! It's staying lighter out now, isn't it?"

45 days from today is February 15th. A little rounding in either direction and I will make the bold prediction that come Valentine's Day, February 14th, you may be alone, your partner may have disappointed you, boxed chocolate may still taste terrible and roses may still have their thorns, but you'll probably wake up that day and think, "Well, at least it's not as dark as it has been." Comforting, right? An extra hour and a half of daylight can make up for so many of life's disappointments.

(The graph on the bottom is what we would expect day length changes to look like if it was a constant increase or decrease every day of the year, simply reversing at the solstices. The brackets on the main graph show how roughly equal periods of time (distance in the horizontal direction) leads to small changes in day length near the solstices, but big swings near the equinoxes.)

Dating — online or off — is frustrating and bewildering, a long and tearful journey to a great partner. While technology has absolutely transformed how we find potential dates, the most significant change is cultural. Instead of settling down with someone “good enough” we ask so much from our partners now that it’s only natural the search for them is arduous.

Our conversations about civic matters—economic policies, schooling systems, religion, science, and social institutions—are severely lacking in nuance and reasoned debate. Instead, what flourishes are simplistic arguments and ad hominem attacks. This trend is strengthened by a media environment where we can easily consume pieces tailored to our point of view, avoiding challenge and change.

On Being is a weekly public radio show hosted by Krista Tippett ostensibly about religion and spirituality, but now the host of a broader series of discussions called the Civil Conversations Project. I used to turn off On Being when it came on my radio Sunday afternoons, put off by the wispy quality, assuming it was a liberal echo chamber of feel-good, empty spirituality.

But as I would listen in snippets, or accidentally turn it on in the car, I found it to be a series of careful, respectful dialogues about difficult subjects, with religion, of course, among the trickiest.

So it did not altogether surprise me to find myself enchanted by arecent episode on gay marriage, which really became a window into how to have civil debates. An interview of David Blankenhorn and Jonathon Rauch—originally on opposite sides of the gay marriage debate, and now friends in agreement on many issues—the discussion covered David’s changed mind on gay marriage, but much more interestingly their process of what they called “achieving disagreement.”

For this post I really want to excerpt some longer segments that, I think, speak for themselves. I encourage listening to the full episode. To have two people agree about how to disagree, that are intellectually honest in their point of view and empathetic enough to consider the other side is tragically rare these days and models a better way to converse. I think we can learn from them how to continue to passionately disagree while remaining not just polite, but truly civil.